


new in town

by fortunatelyshynerd



Category: Riverdale - Fandom
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe, F/M, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, I do not live in New York City so excuse all the geographical mistakes, New York City, Veronica Lodge centric, Veronica: The New York Era, because that's how i roll, italics heavy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-28
Updated: 2018-01-28
Packaged: 2019-03-10 15:14:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,670
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13504170
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fortunatelyshynerd/pseuds/fortunatelyshynerd
Summary: The club was pulsing, like a heartbeat. It was all so alive. Not like at home, where the apartment was always cold and still and silent, with it’s marble floors and brand new appliances that no one ever used. Home was like living in a museum, or a mausoleum.Veronica Lodge character study, throughout the years.





	new in town

_**i. fluorescent adolescent** _

Veronica’s day had begun at about one a.m that night. She had pulled herself out of Claire’s messy bed, swiped on some eyeliner, mussed up her hair and straightened her pearls and headed out into the New York Night. She deserved it. She deserved all of it. The music was great (some random band out of Brooklyn that she could boast about knowing before anyone else), the drink was great (straight whiskey, she was her father’s daughter) and she was Veronica _fucking_ Lodge (so that was great). She knew she could dance until five, sleep like the dead until family breakfast, get perfect grades at school, perform at a pep rally until nine and do it all over again all while wearing pearls and heels and with not a single hair out of place.

She worked _goddamn_ hard. She deserved this.

The club was pulsing, like a heartbeat. It was all so alive. Not like at home, where the apartment was always cold and still and silent, with it’s marble floors and brand new appliances that no one ever used and cool colour scheme because _that’s the style honey._ Home was like living in a museum, or a mausoleum.

 

 

_**ii. roxanne** _

She sat cross legged on the floor, like she used to, waiting for her father to come home. She would wait for hours and hours just to hear the _ding_ of the elevator and sounds of his leather soled shoes outside the door, when she would sprint to her bed, dive under the covers and switch the light off and wait with hot breath for him to come for her goodnight kiss.

Now that she was older, she knew that he knew that she had been awake, waiting up for him. She imagined him putting his briefcase onto the table, hanging up his coat and umbrella on the rack and walk the thirteen paces (she had counted) to her bedroom door and kiss her forehead goodnight. That used to be the highlight of her day, sometimes the only time she would ever see him.

_Screw him._

She took another swig from the champagne bottle and stretched out like a cat. She wasn’t waiting for him now. While lifting up the bottle to her lips, she sadly admired the glint of gold on her slender wrist. It had come this morning, while she was eating breakfast alone. Hand-delivered by the doorman.

_Sorry we couldn’t be there on your sweet sixteenth Veronica dearest. Happy Birthday. Love, mom and dad_

Happy fucking birthday to her. In stockinged feet she drowsily spun along to the music. She didn’t know how she felt. She lifted her hands up into the air, high above her head, letting the alcohol permeate her soul. Champagne spilled down her arms, and some onto the expensive rug. She didn’t care.

 

 

_**iii. sleep on the floor** _

The back of a limo is smaller than you imagine.

Veronica span her golden birthday bracelet around her wrist, once, twice, thrice.

_“One year, maybe two, three at a maximum and he’ll be out” her father’s lawyer had said._

Three years. She’d be almost twenty. In college, or working. She would be graceful, mature, he would have to ask for some of her time, he would beg for her forgiveness. Maybe she would forgive him, maybe she wouldn’t.

Two years. Eighteen years old, a few months until graduation. She would have college interviews where they would ask about her name, if she was that Veronica Lodge. Maybe she would apply under her mother’s maiden name. That would kill him. The family name was everything, reputation was everything - but then again, it was his fault.

One year. Just turned seventeen. It wouldn’t have been her first birthday without him. Everything would be raw, painful. He would try and slot into the empty space that he used to fill, feel entitled to the family life he built and then destroyed. There would be screaming matches, poisonous words, battles fought at the dining room table, but she knew that he would win in the end. He always did.

 

 

_**iv. new slang** _

Riverdale High was like something out of an eighties movie. Strike that, fifties movie. It was all letterman jackets and pastels, pepsi cola and milkshakes. She half expected the guy in her french class to ask her to a record hop. But high school is high school, no matter what century it appears to be from. There were cheerleaders and rich kids, the nerds and the musical theatre geeks. There would be tests to pass, boys to kiss, parties to attend, girls to befriend. Well _a girl_ to befriend.

Veronica Lodge and Betty Cooper were meant to be friends. Veronica knew it in her bones, deep in her heart. She hadn’t really had a best friend in New York, just girls she got elegantly tipsy with and danced in clubs with, not the type to share milkshakes and swap secrets with. Betty Cooper was her best friend destiny. They had shared witty banter, traded references _(the girl had good taste)_ and fit like puzzle pieces.

She could see the future she had always wanted stretched out before her. Sleepovers with popcorn and stolen peach schnapps, shopping for prom dresses and homecoming gowns, study sessions around the kitchen table. If Veronica had someone as good and loyal and kind and sweet as Betty Cooper by her side, it wouldn’t matter if her father had torn their family asunder or that she and her mother fought constantly or that sometimes she felt so alone that she wanted to crawl under a table and sob. She wouldn’t be alone. She could text or call or meet at the diner. Betty would understand better than anyone else. She could just tell.

 

 

_**v. b-a-b-y** _

She had drunkenly kissed Archie Andrews in a dark closet during seven minutes in heaven. She had kissed him and he tasted like sparking cider, because of course he doesn’t drink, and he knew exactly what to do, because of course he did. It was nice and comforting in the way only a kiss can be for about three seconds until reality dropped on their heads like a piano crashing from the sky.

They had broken apart, as if they had both been shocked.

“That was wrong,” he whispered, panic rising in his voice. “We can’t tell Betty, like, ever,” he ran his hand through his hand through his hair. “I am so stupid.”

“Agreed,” she replied. “Add me to the list of idiots. She loves you. How could I do that to her? I am such a terrible person.”

“How could we do that to her. It wasn’t just you, it was me as well.”

“We are both awful people.”

He pulled out his phone and checked the timer he had set. The background of his phone was a smiling selfie of the two of them.

“Do you love her?” His face was illuminated by the blue light from his phone screen.

He answered immediately. “Yes.”

“Like a sister, or as-”

“More than that. I only just realised that now. You know I’ve been writing songs all summer, and pretty much all of them are about her. Guess it only took me kissing some random girl in a closet to get there.”

Veronica elbowed him gently in the side. “Glad this random girl could help.” She paused. “Are you going to tell her?”

“I will. Maybe she’ll get mad, hopefully she won’t. I wouldn’t blame her either way.” He turned his head slightly to the side, and smiled fondly as if remembering a memory. “You know I kinda always thought I’d marry her.”

“Really?”

“Well, technically we’ve been married since first grade.”

“Thats so cute.”

“It was. Small ceremony, you know, non religious, just close friends.”

“Sounds classy.”

“Oh, it was,” he laughed quietly.

“Well, I hope to be there for the real thing.”

“I’ll be sure to tell this story in my speech. Ladies and Gentleman, Webster’s Dictionary describes Seven minutes in heaven as...”

 

 

_**vi. pencil full of lead** _

She nearly crashed their first date. She was picking up her order to go from Pop’s (burger, fries, chocolate milkshake, extra-extra onion rings), to eat at home in front of the TV, waiting for Betty to call with the play by play. She saw them in their usual booth, sitting across from each other and by sheer force of habit she nearly walked over to them to sit down and steal Archie’s fries. But she stopped herself at the last minute and instead waved at them from across the diner. Neither of them noticed her, too wrapped up in each other’s company to look up.

A few hours and a lot of episodes of Friends later, Veronica’s phone buzzed. She grabbed her phone, quickly, desperate to hear how it had gone.

_it was so great!!!! turn on facetime so we can talk properly!!!!!!! xxx B_

Veronica clutched her phone to her chest and did a little happy dance, grinning merrily. She reached across the sofa for her laptop, ready to hear everything.

 

 

_**vii. the first days of spring** _

It was spring again.

Spring was different here. Instead of being some arbitrary season, just the transitionary period between winter coats and sundresses, spring was an affair. It meant spring training for baseball season, cherry blossom fairs and Pop Tate’s spring speciality cherry pie.

The cherry pie was served with a double serving of whipped cream and Twin Peaks references. Jughead had to be lightly slapped so he would stop saying _damn fine cup of coffee_ every time he was poured a new cup.

At the 86th Annual Cherry Blossom Fair, Veronica and Betty smiled and cheered as Cheryl was crowned as Cherry Blossom Queen and laughed and cheered even louder when an extremely embarrassed Archie was made King, blushing redder than his hair. Veronica called him ‘His Majesty’ for a week straight.

Betty always pointed out the same patch of bluebells every time they walked past them on the way to school, and told Veronica that she kept a bunch in a jam jar on her desk at the end of every spring so she could see them longer. Veronica made a note to find a way to give Betty bluebells for her birthday in June.

The Vixens were obliged to stay and cheer for the first baseball game (it was a proud tradition dating back to 1956, you see) and they all giggled when Dilton Doiley nearly managed to knock himself out with his own bat (Dilton embarrassing himself in sport was also a proud traditon dating all the way back to 2006, you see). Veronica, Betty and Archie all drove back together in Archie’s slightly beat up truck and sung along really out of tune to whatever was on the radio.

 

 

_**viii. ghosts that we knew** _

Her father had returned. Eighteen months after his imprisonment, The Great Hiram Lodge was out of prison. Some uncovered evidence had come to light, putting her father’s business partner into the legal spotlight. Uncle John was apparently the mastermind, despite him being, to quote her father, _so useless he couldn’t tell the difference between gross and net profit margins._

She had greeted him with a hug and kiss when he came home, smiled when she needed to, gave him the necessary information about her life in Riverdale, all while thinking about the cover of the newspaper left at Pop’s that morning, with the picture of Uncle John’s wife and son sobbing at his sentencing.

Veronica avoided the apartment as much as she could. She woke early and ate on the way to school, stayed late to pack up after cheerleading practice, had a study date at Pop’s most days of the week. Her father never went in there. He did once, while she was there with Betty, Archie, Jughead and Kevin, stopping over to say hello to her friends while waiting for his order.

The whole place had erupted in whispers. One woman, sitting at the counter, left immediately. He was mortified, she could tell.

He didn’t really leave the apartment anymore, just stayed in his study, pulling the strings on his latest project from behind the scenes, letting her mother be the public face of the company for once.

 

 

_**ix. istanbul (not constantinople)** _

On instagram Veronica scrolls through graduation photos of her old classmates, the school year finishing earlier, so they can go on long vacations in the Hamptons or Europe or wherever is the most expensive. Why does she still follow these people?

She couldn’t imagine what she would have done if she stayed there, if she would be posing in these stupid photos in a red cap and gown. Would she have a boyfriend, some lacrosse player who wooed her with his daddy’s stock portfolio and Tiffany’s tennis bracelets?

She certainly wouldn’t be where she was now, in her best friend’s bedroom helping her edit her valedictorian speech that currently clocked in at 38 minutes long. Gazing around Betty’s peaches and cream bedroom, Veronica smiled at the polaroid pictures tacked onto the frame of her mirror. Betty and Veronica at cheerleading practice, Archie and Betty kissing at prom, Jughead in the middle of eating a triple decker cheese burger. She rolled over onto her stomach and thrust her phone at Betty.

“Check out this girl at my old school’s terrible nose job, seriously she looks like Owen Wilson's stunt double!”

 

 

**_x. say hey (i love you)_ **

The city seemed different to what she remembered. When she was younger, she spent her time in the ivory towers of the upper east side and in dark, upscale, slightly grimy clubs she could bribe her way into but now she wanted to climb the Empire State Building with Archie, look at paintings and obscure modern art at the MoMA with Betty and help Jughead on his mission to find the best burger in New York before he turned thirty, although they all knew nothing could beat Pop’s.

They all shared a tiny apartment together that was mostly on the chic side of shabby chic. Veronica had painted it all on a weekend when the other three had all gone home. The walls were a light blue that reminded her of the sky over Riverdale one hot summer day that they had all gone sunbathing by the river. Archie cooked most nights because the one time Betty had tried, she had nearly set the pasta pot on fire. Betty framed Jughead’s movie posters and hung them above the sofa in one neat line. _Rebel Without A Cause, Rear Window, North By Northwest, Double Indemnity._ His Hitchcock phase seemed to have stuck. 

Normally Veronica was late home at her part time job interning with an small investment firm in the business district, but tonight she had a day off. She sat out on the fire escape, no shoes on, and a blanket wrapped around her shoulders looking out at the criss-crossing streets. Betty had put on some music from an old playlist and was bobbing around, twirling her dress like a player in West Side Story. The song changed from some soft indie rock band with a pretentious name that Archie loved to a super cheesy song that they danced to at their prom. Betty squealed and began to properly dance around the apartment, singing along loudly. She headed over to Jughead, who sighed, but let her pull him away from his book and his chair and the two began to jive around the apartment. Betty ran over the window and pulled Veronica in, twirling her around like a ballerina. Veronica began to dance with her, not caring how uncool this music was, but how cool the people were. Archie was doing his dad dancing in the kitchen, and Betty was spinning around so much that Jughead was having to steady her. Veronica threw her hands above her head, and moved to the music. _They deserved this._

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you liked it! All the little breaks in bold are songs that I feel fit that section of the story, and some are just guilty pleasures.


End file.
